UK Sailmakers is holding a rules seminar for women sailors on March 28th at the UK loft in City Island, New York. Let the guys have their own seminar; here’s your chance to meet and mingle with some of the area’s best women sailors as you brush-up on THE RACING RULES OF SAILING.

MARCO ISLAND, FL (Feb. 14) Shown is the classic 1986 Frers-designed Dawn 41 MOBY NICK, which won the South West Florida Winter Cup in the True Cruising Class while flying her brand new X-Drive Carbon roller-furling genoa along with a 2007 Tape-Drive mainsail. Owner John Amendola, Sr., wrote, “Thanks for the great sails; they have great shape and look great. The design of the new 135% genoa is nicer than the 2006 genoa it replaced.” For more information about UK-Sailmakers’ X-Drive sail construction process, click here.

Arcona Yachts of Sweden, Oceanvolt Electric Engines of Finland, and UK Sailmakers have teamed up to create the first zero emissions cruising sailboat: the Arcona 380Z, where the “Z” stands for zero emissions. Their combined efforts won Best-In-Show at the 2015 Helsinki Boat Show. The primary source of electrical power generator will be seven square meters of photovoltaic film attached to each side of the Tape-Drive mainsail built by UK Sailmakers Sweden and outfitted with the solar panels and components by UK France. The PowerSails® solar cells developed by Alain Janet, owner of UK Sailmakers France, will generate an average of 1,000 watts (1KW) per hour. According to Janet, “Modern thin-film photovoltaic cells do not need direct sunlight to generate electricity. In fact, the panels on the sail opposite the sun will generate 30-40 percent of their maximum output with the indirect and reflected light.”

MONACO, France (Feb. 7-8) Congratulations to Germany’s Claus Lehmann and his crew on BLANKER HANS for winning the 32-boat J/70 fleet at the Yacht Club de Monaco’s 2015 Primo Cup. Lehmann received his new boat and sails three weeks before the Primo Cup and came out on top using a stock set of stock J/70 class sails built by UK Sailmakers Texas.